Blog of Aestheticized Violence.
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Saturday, April 16, 2011

Salad Fingers

Remember the good ol' days of watching flash animation on the web? The G.I. Joe PSA parodies, Charlie the Unicorn, and Badger Badger? Well once in a while a flash animation is produced that changes us forever through its morbid humor and indulgence in depravity. An animation like Salad Fingers.

Salad Fingers was mentioned in class in the context of Drusilla, the creepy vampire/woman/child who speaks with a unnervingly slow British accent. So similar are their attitudes and mannerisms, I couldn't help but imagine Drusilla caressing rusty spoons with her salad fingers! The second episode of Salad Fingers by David Firth entitled "Friends" reminds me of the scene when Drusilla is talking with her inanimate dolls. Her and Salad Finger's lonesome and childlike manners of dealing with "friends" is terrifying by challenging the status quo of normal childlike behavior. They both are hyper sensual characters that enjoy tasting, smelling, and touching the strangest things to make us feel uncomfortable. Also we have trouble gauging just how dangerous these characters are. Clearly they are extremely dangerous to others, but their physical characteristics make them appear frail. Certainly the music adds an entire dimension to the creepiness of the events taking place. Ultimately it is the concept of the archetypal abandoned British child that terrifies me the most.

5 comments:

Ugh, Salad Fingers is SO CREEPY hahaha, but it's like insanely funny because it's so creepy. I think that's the same reason Drusilla is so entertaining, because she's so unpredictable. Like you said, we often have trouble gauging how dangerous certain characters are because they're so unusual and unpredictable. I think a lot of horror movies play upon this paradigm to scare viewers like Orphan or Silent Hill.

I was not made aware of Salad Fingers until this post. Of course, I had to watch 4 additional episodes just to get a better feel for the creepiness. I now understand the comparisons to Drusilla that were made in class. The monotonous and slow speech pattern exhibited by both characters adds a chilling effect. The fixation with touching objects, childlike tendencies, desire for blood, and emotional unpredictability define Salad Fingers and Drusilla. All of these traits make the characters terrifying to the viewer because they exhibit qualities that oppose societal norms.

Good God Salad Fingers gives me the heebie jeebies. It amazes me that something so child-like can be so disturbing. Accompanied with drunken speech, senseless rambling, and ignorant innocence this passive aggressive figure is definitely the cartoon version of Drusilla.

The creepiest thing about Salad Fingers, in my opinion, is (his?) inability to be placed in any sort of social category that I can think of. SF seems to be rambling about things that I wouldn't even dream of. To me, his unpredictable actions reflect creepy and violent undertones that will most likely make me have nightmares forever

I completely agree that Drusilla and Salad Fingers are terrifying because they break free of the regulatory ideal of "children", yet have too many childlike characteristics to be considered actual monsters. They can both be categorized as abjections. Barbara Creed writes about Julia Kristeva's discourse on abjection: "The place of the abject is where meaning collapses, the place where I am not. The abject threatens life, it must be radically excluded from the place of the living subject, propelled away from the body and deposited on the other side of an imaginary border which separates the self from that which threatens the self." We are brought up to fear any challenge to the status quo, and characters like Drusilla and Salad Fingers precisely play with this space where meaning collapses.